Saturday, August 31, 2019

WASHINGTON – A Monsanto executive said he wanted to “beat
the shit out of" a mothers’ group that urged the company to stop selling
its Roundup weedkiller, according to internal emails obtained by lawyers for
victims who say the pesticide caused their cancer.

The July 2013 emails, reported today by New Food Economy,
reveal an exchange between Dr. Daniel Goldstein of Monsanto and two outside
consultants about how to respond to an open letter from Moms Across America, a
grassroots advocacy group.

The emails were obtained during the discovery
process for litigation against Bayer, Monsanto’s parent company, over Roundup,
which three separate juries have found caused cancer in people.

Moms Across America’s letter to then-Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant
cited scientific studies linking glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup,
to cancer. It also decried the company’s marketing of seeds for genetically
modified foods: “We Moms know your Mom would be proud of you if you put the
health of the nation first and stopped selling GMO seeds and spraying
Glyphosate (Roundup®) and other harsher pesticides,” the letter said.

In the emails, Goldstein wrote that the group was making “a
pretty nasty looking set of allegations” and that he had been “arguing for a
week to beat the shit out of them.”

Using identical scatological language, one of the
consultants – Bruce Chassy, then a professor at the University of Illinois –
also advocated attacking the moms’ group. The other consultant – Wayne Parrot,
a University of Georgia crop scientist – disagreed: “You can’t beat up mothers,
even if they are dumb mothers but you can beat up the organic industry,” which
he falsely claimed “paid for and wrote that letter.”

“These
ugly emails reveal the utter contempt that Monsanto has for public health and
for consumers, including mothers who only want to protect their kids’ health,”
said EWG President Ken Cook. “Bayer is reeling from its monumental blunder of
buying Monsanto, and these emails should remind them that they acquired the
company that gave us DDT, Agent Orange and PCBs.”

Advocates say veterans, especially those living in Georgia,
will lose a powerful voice in Washington, D.C. when Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny
Isakson resigns at the end of the year.

Isakson is currently serving his third consecutive term as
chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, a position he’s held
since 2015.

“Anytime your senator
is the chairman of a committee, especially a big committee that one of the
cabinet members has to answer to, you get a lot of extra attention,” said Joe
Chenelly, executive director of AMVETS.

Chenelly says Isakson used his position to elevate the
concerns of veterans in Georgia and across the country.

He also praised Isakson’s willingness to work across the
aisle, calling the Veterans Affairs
committee “the most bipartisan” on Capitol Hill.

Chenelly pointed to Isakson’s recent work on the 2018
MISSION Act, which gives veterans access to healthcare outside of the VA
system.

The measure it not without its critics, but Chenelly says it
never would have passed in the first place if
Isakson hadn’t been willing to reconcile the concerns of Democrats and
Republicans on his committee.

“He has always tried
to make sure that there was respect when the committee worked on very
controversial issues, that everybody was heard, that everybody had at least
something to gain,” said Adrian Atizado, with the group Disabled American
Veterans.

VERONA, Mo. -- Verona, Mo. is continuing to struggle with
local soil and water being contaminated. According to the EPA, recent tests
show two dangerous chemicals were found in the ground near a previously
contaminated industrial site.

That site sits on the west edge of town and was previously
known for making Agent Orange. The soil at the site was contaminated with the
chemical dioxin. Dioxin is known to cause cancer and other serious health
problems.

The EPA declared the land a "superfund" site and
fenced it off. They also spent years cleaning dioxin from the soil and removing
contaminated equipment.

Some still fear their wells are land are still contaminated.

More than a 100 people came to the high school this evening
to hear about the clean up efforts by the EPA.

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

The health of women Gulf War (deployed) and Gulf Era
(nondeployed) veterans is understudied; although most studies examining the
health effects of deployment to the Gulf War adjust for gender in multivariate
analyses, gender-specific prevalence and effect measures are not routinely
reported. The National Academy of Medicine recommended that the Department of
Veterans Affairs assess gender-specific health conditions in large cohort
studies of Gulf War veterans.

METHODS:

Data from this study come from the follow-up study of a
national cohort of Gulf War and Gulf Era veterans. This study was conducted
between 2012 and 2014, and was the second follow-up of a population-based
cohort of Gulf War and Gulf Era veterans that began in 1995. Measures included
self-reported medical conditions and frequency of doctor visits as well as
validated screening instruments for mental health conditions.

RESULTS:

Overall, female veterans (both Gulf War and Era) reported
poorer health than their male counterparts as measured by the prevalence of
self-reported disease. The top five prevalent conditions in both Gulf War and
Gulf Era veterans were migraine, hypertension, major depressive disorder,
arthritis, and dermatitis. Female Gulf War veterans were found to have a higher
prevalence of disease than male Gulf Era veterans.

CONCLUSIONS:

Women veterans, particularly deployed veterans, from this
era have significant medical needs that may justify increased outreach from the
Department of Veterans Affairs. Our findings highlight the importance of asking
about military service, particularly for women veterans, in the clinical
setting, both in the Department of Veterans Affairs and in the private sector.

PORT TOWNSEND — The Jefferson County commissioners plan to
send a letter to Pope Resources and state agencies that oversee herbicide
spraying to ask for alternative methods and to ensure adequate testing is in
place to protect watersheds.

County residents continue to push public officials both at
the county level and at the city of Port Townsend after aerial sprays that
included glyphosate were applied by helicopter on private property last week.

Glyphosate is the active chemical in Roundup and the subject
of a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto. States such as California list it
as a cancer-causing chemical, but the federal Environmental Protection Agency
won’t approve those labels for the product.

“We have taken a
position of wanting to work with our constituents,” County Commission Chair
Kate Dean said in her response to public comments Monday. “There’s an upward
pressure that has to keep moving.

“We are just another
version of you in that we try to use our collective voice to apply upward
pressure.”

Pope Resources legally applied herbicide at multiple sites
in the county last week with a chemical approved by the state Department of
Agriculture and permitted by the state Department of Natural Resources.

Tokyo (VNA) – A Japanese researcher has just announced a
project on training Vietnamese health workers in addressing problems related to
Agent Orange (AO)/dioxin chemical that was sprayed on the country during the
war.

Japan's national broadcasting organization NHK quoted
Professor Kido Teruhiko from the Kanazawa University and officials from the
Japan International Cooperation Agency as saying the project will last for
three years in the Vietnamese central province of Binh Dinh’s Phu Cat district.

Kido unveiled the detection of a high level of AO/dioxin
contained in milk of nursing mothers in the area, adding that the rate of local
underweight children is also high.

As such, he has planned to train the health workers to check
the dioxin level in breast milk and provide healthcare consultations for local
mothers.

The professor is experienced in studying AO/dioxin impact.
He hopes to use results of his research to improve the well-being of Vietnamese
people.

The US army sprayed some 80 million litres of toxic
chemicals, 61 percent of which was Agent Orange containing 366 kilograms of
dioxin, over nearly one quarter of the total area of South Vietnam from 1961 to
1971.

Marilyn Leistner, the last mayor of Times Beach, gazed at a
grass-covered mound, the size of four football fields, where the remains of her
town are buried.

“Everything that was
near and dear to the people in this community. All the houses and the city equipment.
Everything that they didn't take with them that was left in their homes is
buried here,” she said, softly.

The “town mound” isn’t in the brochures, but it is the most
unusual landmark at Route 66 State Park, which opened 20 years ago on the site of
Times Beach.

The park is next to the Meramec River, just off Interstate
44 about 17 miles southwest of St. Louis. The creation of the 400-acre park was
the final chapter of an environmental disaster that destroyed Leistner’s
close-knit community of 2,000 people.

Times Beach made national headlines in December 1982 when
state and federal health officials declared the town uninhabitable because its
unpaved roadways were polluted with dioxin, a toxic chemical.

In February 1983, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
announced a buyout of Times Beach. Structures were bulldozed and buried. The
contaminated soil was scooped up and incinerated. The cleanup took 14 years and
cost $110 million.

Hundreds of homes are in the landfill, plus four churches,
assorted businesses — even the Times Beach water tower, Leistner said. She
would like to see a plaque placed at the mound to commemorate the town and its
history.

Leistner, 81, believes it’s her duty to continue telling the
story of Times Beach to reporters, researchers and area schoolchildren now
several generations removed from the catastrophe.

“The whole country
needs to know what happened here, so it doesn't happen again,’’ Leistner said.

An industrial site in the small town of Verona, Missouri that once
manufactured the Vietnam War-era herbicide Agent Orange remains a concern to
local officials, who fear the site may be polluting water wells in the area.

The 180-acre Syntex tract on the west edge of town was
declared an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund Cleanup site in 1983, and
tons of dioxin-contaminated soil and equipment were removed in the late 1980s
and early 1990s.

Dioxin was a byproduct of manufacturing Agent Orange, and
later from the production of the antibacterial chemical hexachlorophene at the
site. Now, Verona mayor pro tem Claude Carr said he fears water wells are being
contaminated by chemicals he believes are coming from the site.The Verona Well Field is located in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Site contamination impacted three aquifers and 27 drinking water wells over a
160-acre area. EPA determined that the sources of contamination were three
1-acre facilities. The Thomas Solvent Company used two facilities for storage,
blending and containerization of solvents; the Grand Trunk Western Railroad
operated a paint shop on the third facility. Leakage from containers and
underground storage tanks, spillage, and direct dumping contaminated the soil
and groundwater with hazardous chemicals. Following cleanup, operation and
maintenance activities are ongoing.

Friday, August 23, 2019

"The Royal Commissioner, Justice Evatt, laid the blame
for the veterans' problems on the normal response to war - acute stress."

CANBERRA: The Agent Orange Royal Commission has made a clear
finding there is no link between chemical defoliants sprayed over Vietnam and
the health problems suffered by veterans of the war.

In a nine-volume 3,000-page report tabled in Federal
Parliament yesterday, the Royal Commissioner, Justice Evatt, laid the blame for
the veterans' problems on the normal response to war - acute stress. The
Commission on the Use and Effects of Chemical Agents on Australian Personnel in
Vietnam, to give it its full title, was set up soon after the Hawke Government
was elected.

For the past two years, at the request of residents,
researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and around the Houston area have
been studying the health impacts on the population following Hurricane Harvey.

Dr. Cheryl Walker, professor, and director of the Center for
Precision and Environmental Health at Baylor College of Medicine said they were
able to determine what each person tested was exposed to and how they were
affected when the flooding subsided.

"Even though dioxin was measured in the flood, unless
people were actually putting their hand and their wristband in those
floodwaters, they would not have been necessarily exposed, and that's what we
saw," said Walker.

She said they asked about people physical and mental health
following Hurricane Harvey.

"We saw there was no detectable dioxin exposures in any
of our cohorts, but we did see, for example, high levels of exposure to
pesticides and some other industrial chemicals," said Walker.

She said the study also found a big variation in exposure
due to location.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recently issued
Circular 26-19-23 to provide interim guidance on the provisions of the Blue
Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act of 2019 (Blue Water Act) that affect VA’s Loan
Guaranty Service. The amendments made by the Blue Water Act will apply to loans
that are closed on or after January 1, 2020.

The Blue Water Act increases the maximum VA guaranty amounts
for purchase, construction, and cash-out refinance loans that exceed the
Freddie Mac conforming loan limit. VA advises that for loans above $144,000,
the maximum amount of the guaranty will be 25 percent of the loan amount, regardless
of the Freddie Mac conforming loan limit. The Circular provides examples of how
to calculate the maximum guaranty available for a loan in situations in which
the veteran does and does not have the full entitlement available. (VA notes
that for Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loans, it will continue to guaranty
25 percent of the loan amount without regard to the veteran’s available
entitlement or the Freddie Mac conforming loan limit.)

IPOH, Malaysia August 22 — An environmental engineering expert has
suggested that the government consider the “fast pyrolysis” technology as a
disposal method for the country’s plastic waste.

Environmental engineer Frank Wilson, who has 40 years
experience in water and waste treatment, said “fast pyrolysis” technology does
not emit any hazardous toxins such as dioxin, which can be found in other
technologies which involve incineration.

“Unlike the
technologies which involve incineration that requires oxygen to burn and
produce dioxin, fast pyrolysis does not involve any burning as it is the
process of heating organic matter in the absence of oxygen and making it
decompose to produce flue gas, liquid oil, diesel and biochar (fertiliser),” he
told Malay Mail.

“Normal pyrolysis
operates at 450 degrees Celsius, but fast pyrolysis operates at the temperature
of 950 degrees Celsius. At this temperature, all organics vaporise and
virtually no ash is formed.

“The condensed gases
include naphtha and high-quality diesel,” he added.

His comments follow an announcement by the government recently
that they are looking at turning plastic trash in the country into alternative
fuel and source for producing cement.

Wilson said that technology also produces less flue gas
compared to direct combustion in the way of incineration.

He added that said once the pyrolysis process begins no
external heating is required and the remaining gas can be used to produce
electricity and sold to the grid.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged
a former Veterans Affairs pathologist with the deaths of three veterans and a
scheme to cover up years of drug and alcohol use on the job that caused him to
misread thousands of fluid and tissue samples of ill patients.

Robert Morris Levy was indicted on three counts of
involuntary manslaughter and 28 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud and false
statements to law enforcement officials. The Department of Veterans Affairs has
told members of Congress and investigators that Levy was responsible for at
least 15 deaths and the inappropriate treatment of many other patients.

During 12 years as chief pathologist here and in leadership
roles on multiple oversight boards and medical committees, Levy, 53, read
almost 34,000 pa­thol­ogy slides of aging veterans. He had their lives in his
hands, prosecutors said in unsealing their indictment. But his addiction and
attempts to cover it up even after VA paid for a lengthy inpatient treatment
program led to multiple deaths and other life-threatening trauma for veterans,
they said.

“Diagnoses rendered
by Levy and the information he entered in patients’ medical records largely
influenced decisions about the course of medical treatment” for patients at the
Veterans Health Care System of the Ozarks, the indictment said.

It’s been almost a month since the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention shut down an Army infectious disease research lab, and a
local lawmaker wants answers.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, sent a letter on Friday
to acting Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, wanting to know how the shutdown of the
Fort Detrick, Maryland, facility will affect its ongoing work and whether
anyone was exposed to a dangerous agent as a result of the “deficiencies” the
CDC found in a June inspection.

“I was disappointed
to have learned of this situation through press reports, rather than from the
Army directly, even though it happened several weeks ago,” Van Hollen wrote.

USAMRIID received a cease and desist letter from the CDC on
July 18, a spokeswoman confirmed to Military Times on Friday.

Violations with the lab’s wastewater treatment system
prompted the shutdown, she said, leading to a suspension from the Federal
Select Agents Program, which allows facilities to handle biological and
chemical agents.

One of those is Ebola, for which USAMRIID has been working
to develop a vaccine. In March the lab received approval from the Food and Drug
Administration to inject monkeys with live virus in order to test the
effectiveness of treatments.

READ THE STORYWhile the VA healthcare system sees about 7 million veteran patients a year, that
leaves 13 million in the civilian healthcare system. And, according to the
Warrior Centric Health Foundation, those civilian facilities need to be more
aware of the needs of veteran patients.

"Warrior Centric Healthcare Foundation's purpose is
primarily to ensure that America delivers on its promise if you will,"
said Warrior Centric Healthcare Foundation Chair Evelyn Lewis. "That
promise is that we would care for those who have borne the battle. It's an
adapted statement from Abraham Lincoln's words."

The 501(c)(3) was established in 2013 when Lewis and a
research team discovered the problem with veteran identification in the
civilian healthcare system.

"The largest misconception among the general public,
and indeed those that run hospitals in other healthcare facilities, is that all
veterans get their care at the VA. That is not true," Lewis said.

And the way that civilian doctors typically identify
veterans has some major flaws, according to Lewis.

Oh, the army tried some fancy stuff to bring them to their
knees. Like Agent Orange defoliants, to kill the brush and trees. We’d hike all
day on jungle trails through clouds of poison spray. And they never told me
then, that it would hurt my health today. (Agent Orange Song—Country JoeMcDonald)

Many of us remember shocking images of environmental
destruction from conflicts across the globe; from the spraying of the poisonous
chemical Agent Orange over the forests in Viet Nam in the 1970s, to the burning
oil wells in Kuwait in the 1990s.

Sadly, Viet Nam and Kuwait were not isolated cases. Armed
conflicts around the world, and their aftermath, continue to impact the health
and well-being of people and the environment through pollution, infrastructure
damage and the collapse of governance. The use of chemical weapons in the
Syrian conflict as well as the burning of oil fields by the Dae’sh terrorist
group are poignant recent examples.

Since 1999, the United Nations Environment Programme has
conducted over twenty post-conflict assessments, using state-of-the-art science
to determine the environmental impacts of war. From Afghanistan to Kosovo to
the Gaza Strip and Sudan—armed conflict causes significant harm to the
environment and the communities that depend on natural resources.

Top officials of the Department of Veterans Affairs declined
to step in to try to exempt veterans and their families from a new immigration
rule that would make it far easier to deny green cards to low-income
immigrants, according to documents obtained by ProPublica under a Freedom of
Information Act request.

The Department of Defense, on the other hand, worked
throughout 2018 to minimize the new policy’s impact on military families.

As a result, the regulation, which goes into effect in
October, applies just as strictly to veterans and their families as it does to
the broader public, while active-duty members of the military and reserve
forces face a relaxed version of the rule.

Under the so-called public charge regulation, which became
final last week, immigrants seeking permanent legal status in the U.S. will be
subject to a complex new test to determine if they will rely on public
benefits. Among the factors that immigration officers will consider are whether
the applicant has frequently used public benefits in the past, their household
income, education level and credit scores.

Active-duty military members can accept public benefits
without jeopardizing their future immigration status; veterans and their
families, however, cannot

Sunday, August 18, 2019

Rocky Bleier thought he made peace with what happened in a
rice paddy in Vietnam on Aug. 20, 1969.

What the former Pittsburgh Steelers running back didn’t have
though was closure until a trip back there last year.

Bleier’s visit to Vietnam — the first time he had been back
since being injured in battle — is the subject of ESPN’s “The Return”, which
debuts Tuesday at 8 p.m. EDT on ESPN2. A shorter version began airing Saturday
on “SportsCenter” as part of its weekly SC Featured series.

“It was a different
catharsis than I anticipated,” Bleier said. “Unlike the average veteran who
returned after service and had to repress those feelings, I came back to a
high-profile industry and became a story. In some regards it was cathartic
(during his playing days) that I had to talk about it.”

Bleier’s story remains one of perseverance. He was selected
by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 16th round in 1968 only to be drafted into
the U.S. Army during his rookie season. Three months after being deployed,
Bleier was shot through his thigh and suffered a grenade blast where shrapnel
severely damaged his right foot and both legs when his “Charlie Company” unit
was ambushed during a recovery operation in the Hiep Duc Valley.

Of the 33 soldiers in the infantry unit, 25 were injured and
four killed.

A Willow Springs woman said the U.S. Postal Service isn’t
delivering important packages because cars are blocking her mailbox.

The postal service said the cars need to move.

The problem? It’s a legal parking spot.

Even with a car parked there, it’s possible to open the
mailbox. But the USPS office told the customer it’s against their policy. But
CBS 2 has learned that it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best practice.

Patty Gioia depends on regular deliveries from the USPS
because of medications for her husband.

“He is a Vietnam
veteran, two time cancer survivor due to Agent Orange,” Gioia said.

When his regular delivery of medications didn’t show up in
their mailbox, she called the Willow Springs postmaster.

“I said ‘well my
husband needs his medication.’ And she said ‘well your mailbox is blocked.'”

According to the Environmental Protection Agency,
“pesticides” include products developed to kill anything considered a pest —
insects, worms, plants, fungi, and rodents. It’s worth examining how much risk
to the planet and our health we are willing to pose for the elimination of a
plant or bug.

The market for these chemicals grew after World War II.
Their indiscriminate use was marked by a hopeful naiveté that chemical
application targeting dandelions, beetles and other "pests" would do
away with arduous yard work without consequences.

Then, as now, Americans believed that “if a product could be
sold, it must be safe, (and) embraced the new chemical products for the home
and yard,” according to historian Virginia Jenkins. She quotes a 1947 article
that stated DDT was considered “effective, yet safe to use.” By the 1950s,
“(advertisements) no longer told the consumer which chemicals were in the
products; the consumer was simply assured that the weed killer was easy to use
and effective.”

Friday, August 16, 2019

In March, Veterans Affairs officials said they may have a
decision on adding four new diseases to the list of Agent Orange presumptive
benefits eligibility by the start of the summer. Five months later, they still
haven’t moved ahead.

“They told us they
were ready to go, and we haven’t gone anywhere,” said Rick Weidman, executive
director for policy at Vietnam Veterans of America. “It feels like they just
don’t want to spend any money on this.”

Vietnam veteran advocates feel a sense of urgency because the
the youngest who served there are in their early 60s.

Last November, researchers from the National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering and Medicine announced they had compiled “sufficient
evidence” linking hypertension, bladder cancer, hypothyroidism, and
Parkinson’s-like symptoms with exposure to Agent Orange and other defoliants
used in Vietnam and surrounding countries in the 1960s and 1970s.

Veterans and military service members will have more
borrowing power but will pay slightly higher fees when they use VA home loans
in 2020.

The changes are part of the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans
Act of 2019, signed into law in June and effective Jan. 1, 2020. The new law
eliminates VA loan limits and increases the VA funding fee. It also provides
disability benefits to certain Vietnam War veterans and their children.

VA loan limits are the maximum loan amount the Department of
Veterans Affairs can guarantee without borrowers making a down payment. VA
funding fees are one-time fees borrowers pay in lieu of mortgage insurance to
help cover the government’s costs for backing the loans. If a borrower
defaults, the VA repays the lender a portion of the loan.

When he was deployed in Iraq in 2004 and 2006, toxic smoke
emanating from the "burn pits" that U.S. forces use to destroy
everything from plastics and batteries to medical waste and animal carcasses
seeped into where his unit lived, worked and ate.

"When I first got to Iraq, we got sick, they told us it
was part of the process. Huge big plumes of smoke sat heavy in the air,"
he said. "It just became part of the scenery."

Keplinger, who now works as a field representative for Rep.
Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert, is one of thousands of veterans who believe that
their health has been affected by exposure to burn pits and have struggled to
convince the Department of Defense and the Veterans Health Administration to
take action.

On August 9, the Veterans Administration (VA) issued interim
guidance regarding the implementation of the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans
Act of 2019 (the “Act”), and specifically changes to the VA’s Home Loan
Guaranty Program. In the interim guidance, the VA addresses the provision of
the Act allowing for VA panel appraisers to perform bifurcated appraisals using
third party inspectors. Specifically, the VA states:

The Act amends 38 U.S.C. § 3731(b) by authorizing VA to
establish policies that enable VA-designated appraisers to rely on
third-parties for appraisal related information. VA Fee Panel appraisers are
not authorized to use third-party information before policy is established by
VA. Any VA Fee Panel appraiser found not personally reviewing the subject
property is in violation of VA policy and Uniform Standards of Professional
Appraisal Practice (USPAP) and may result in disciplinary action, including
removal from the panel. (Emphasis added)

Until the VA promulgates interim guidance on how VA Fee Panel
appraisers should proceed on third party inspection data, they should not use
third parties. Once ASA receives the interim guidance, we will provide
additional information.

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

DEADWOOD, S.D. (AP) — “Where the hills heal the heroes.”
That’s the motto for and

mission of Sacred Mountain Retreat Center, a nonprofit
set to open outside of Deadwood in short order, meeting a tall mission.

“The goal of Sacred
Mountain Retreat Center is to bring our military, first responders, and their
families to South Dakota for a time of respite and healing,” Sacred Mountain
Retreat Center Founder and President Jerrid Geving told the Black Hills
Pioneer. “To create an opportunity to strengthen and renew each individual, and
the family, as a whole. It’s a place to connect with others at an all-inclusive
lodge in the beautiful Black Hills.”

Geving, who is originally from Baker, Montana, recently
purchased the retreat center after his family celebrated his grandmother’s 80th
birthday at the facility and he fell in love with the place and its potential.

“I said to my folks,
‘Why don’t we buy that retreat center in Deadwood and turn it into a healing
center for veterans and first responders?’” Geving recalled. “I’ve always had a
very strong passion for our military, for our first responders, and I always
wanted to someday give back. I didn’t know how, but I knew I would, give back
to the men and women who have served our country.”

Once he and his family made up their minds, the retreat
center purchase moved swiftly; the Gevings began negotiations on the property
in September 2018 and closed on the sale in February.

Sacred Mountain Retreat Center is a 10,000-square-foot lodge
located off Highway 385 outside of Deadwood. It sits on 65 acres, bordered by
Forest Service on all three sides. There are eight bedrooms in the main lodge,
as well as a one-bedroom suite.

U.S. Coast Guard members who were exposed to oil while
responding to the

Deepwater Horizon catastrophe were twice as likely to
experience headaches and dizziness as those who were not, according to a new
study by researchers with the Uniformed Services University, a health science
university in Maryland that is run by the federal government.

And those who were exposed to dispersants as well as oil
were significantly more likely to report acute neurological symptoms than those
who were exposed only to the oil, said Jennifer Rusiecki, one of the study's
authors and a professor in the university's department of preventive medicine
and biostatistics.

Previous studies have examined lung and skin irritation in
relationship to exposure to oil and dispersants. But the new study provides a
glimpse of acute neurological effects stemming from exposure to the oil and
dispersants.

As of Aug. 11, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
updated portions of the VA Schedule for Rating Disabilities (VASRD, or Rating
Schedule) that evaluate infectious diseases, immune disorders and nutritional
deficiencies.

The collection of federal regulations used by the Veterans
Benefits Administration helps claims processors evaluate the severity of
disabilities and assign disability ratings.

“VA is in the process
of updating all 15 body systems of the VASRD to more accurately reflect modern
medicine and provide Veterans with clearer rating decisions,” said VA Secretary
Robert Wilkie. “By updating the rating schedule, Veterans receive decisions
based on the most current medical knowledge of their condition.”

Retired Lt. Col. Susan Lukas looked no further than her own
personal experience in the Air Force Reserve when weighing the benefits of a
new bill that could be approved by lawmakers later this year.

Now a legislative director for the Reserve Organization of
America, she was on active duty at the Pentagon on Sept. 11. At the time, Lukas
never considered the toxins that she was breathing in during the terrorist
attack.

“As time went on, I
started having a problem with my throat and started getting tests. What
happened is I ultimately had lung damage from 9/11,” she said.

In the months following the attack, Lukas said she had
problems with breathing and coughing, but wrote it off as part of flu season. It
took several years and a worsening of her symptoms to put the two together. Had
documentation of the exposure been in her medical records, Lukas believes
diagnosis and proper treatment could have come more quickly.

Saturday, August 10, 2019

"These lawsuits in search of ill-informed juries and liberal/green
judges will only needlessly raise the price of these chemicals essential to our
agriculture today and cause great financial harm to your local farmer friends.

I’m reminded of the Agent Orange fiasco where all sorts of
maladies affecting military veterans of Vietnam are blamed on spraying of Agent
Orange.

It is interesting that the same chemicals used in the U.S.
agricultural industry at that time had no effect on the death/disease rate for
those persons applying the same chemical as used in Vietnam when used
domestically."

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The Trump administration says it
won’t approve warning labels for products that contain glyphosate, a move aimed
at California as it fights one of the world’s largest agriculture companies
about the potentially cancer-causing chemical.

California requires warning labels on glyphosate products —
widely known as the weed killer Roundup — because the International Agency for
Research on Cancer has said it is “probably carcinogenic.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency disagrees, saying
its research shows the chemical poses no risks to public health. California has
not enforced the warning label for glyphosate because Monsanto, the company
that makes Roundup, sued and a federal judge temporarily blocked the warning
labels last year until the lawsuit could be resolved.

“It is irresponsible to require labels on products that are
inaccurate when EPA knows the product does not pose a cancer risk,” EPA
Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement. “We will not allow
California’s flawed program to dictate federal policy.”

Turtle Island Restoration Network joined more than 270
community and conservation organizations to file a legal petition in July that
demands the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency adopt strict new
water-pollution limits for industrial plants that create plastic.

Plastic plants discharged 128 million pounds of pollutants
into U.S. waterways last year, their operators reported to the EPA ― including
77,859 pounds of the most toxic pollutants.

The petition calls for a total ban on the discharge of
plastic pollution and detectable levels of the most dangerous toxic pollutants,
including dioxin and benzene. As the fossil fuel industry increases plastic
production and builds dozens of new facilities around the country, the petition
says updated regulations are needed to protect waterways and public health.

“These relentless
plastic barons can no longer deny the impact producing plastic has on oceans,
waterways, wildlife, and even public health,” said Development Associate Stepph
Sharpe. “They must be held responsible for their past, current, and future
plans to put life in the crosshairs in the name of a detrimental product that
has many sustainable alternatives.”

More than 20,000 people have signed a petition calling for a
ban on the sale of toxic personal hygiene products such as tampons and baby
nappies.

The online petition launched in June and is currently
attracting an average rate of 2,000 signatures a week.

The petition is demanding that supermarkets stop selling
personal hygiene products that have been bleached with chlorine dioxide, as
they may contain chemicals that are harmful to human health. These products
include well-known tampon and diaper brands, as well as incontinence pads and
other tissue products such as napkins.

The chlorine dioxide bleaching process used to make these
products releases dioxins – a group of compounds that have been linked to
cancer and infertility as well as other health disorders.

Some of the world’s most popular pesticides have been linked
to the development of cancers like non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Monsanto’s
Roundup, in particular, has been the focus of several lawsuits over recent
months.

The Roundup formula contains glyphosate, which has been
categorized as a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization (WHO). In
one study, scientists found that exposure to glyphosate increased the risk of
NHL by 41 percent.

Roundup also contains surfactants, which facilitate the
absorption of glyphosate. Research indicates that any exposure to glyphosate,
including contacting, inhaling, and ingesting it, can be dangerous.

Glyphosate Has Been Linked to Several Kinds of Cancer

WHO research suggests that Roundup’s particular formula of
glyphosate and surfactants can damage DNA in such a way that it increases the
likelihood of developing tumors in general and NHL specifically. NHL refers to
cancer that starts in the lymphocytes, which are the body’s white blood cells.
There are several different kinds of NHL, so the prognosis and the most
effective approach to treatment depend on the circumstances.

Monday, August 5, 2019

A draft report for Agent Orange sampling and analysis
conducted in November 2018 is still being finalized by the Region 9 division of
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to Nick Lee, Guam
Environmental Protection Agency spokesman.

Once this is completed, GEPA will review and either revise
or release to the public, Lee added.

GEPA and USEPA collected samples from five sample subsites
in areas that were believed to have been exposed to Agent Orange, according to
a November 2018 news release.

"An area off of NCS road, along Route 3 and in the
vicinity of Potts Junction and a pipe line tie-in located in Tiyan were among
the first areas to be sampled. USEPA’s on-scene coordinator, Harry L. Allen,
and USEPA Superfund Technical Assistance and Response Team contractors from
Weston Solutions Inc. performed the sampling," the release stated.

READ THE STORY Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center & Archive, home
to the nation’s largest and most comprehensive collection of information on the
Vietnam War, is looking to make that collection more accessible to researchers
around the world.

Thanks to a $95,740 grant from the National Endowment for
the Humanities (NEH), the Vietnam Center & Archive (VNCA) will now be able
to transcribe, edit and publish online its entire backlogged collection of oral
history interviews conducted by the VNCA Oral History Project, which includes a
diverse array of Vietnam veterans and their family members.

“In addition to the
millions of pages of documents in our collections, the interviews we conduct as
part of our Oral History Project are essential to a better and more complete
understanding of the Vietnam War,” said Steve Maxner, director of the VNCA.
“Our interviews provide a human face to the conflict, offering insight into the
emotional and psychological costs of war that researchers cannot get from
traditional government and military documents. This level of comprehension is
critical, not just for students and scholars, but for military and government
officials who make the policies and ultimate decisions that send our military
men and women into harm’s way. This generous grant from the NEH will allow us
to transcribe these interviews, providing much easier access to them and the
important information they contain.”

The thing about the banned pesticide DDT is that it never
goes away — at least not for hundreds of years.

This is a lesson Central Florida learned the hard way,
starting nearly 40 years ago when a crooked chemical company owner dumped
DDT-laced water into ponds that overflowed into a drainage canal connected to
Lake Apopka.

The city of Clermont was a rural outpost of 5,000 people at
the time in a county where the owner of Tower Chemical, which made the DDT, was
also the head of the Lake County Pollution Control Board.

Anyone possessed of the facts in the paragraph above — and
knowing that this is Florida — can finish this fox-watching-hen-house story.

Few people realized that something was amiss at Tower
because the land between the east border of Clermont and the west one of
Oakland was a no man’s land. The plant was conveniently tucked just a half-mile
north of State Road 50 on County Road 455.

The first clue came when the toxic stew started killing
neighborhood dogs that unwittingly lapped from puddles and sent the now-banned
pesticide flowing into Florida's second-largest lake, already polluted by years
of municipal and agricultural waste.

Allan Hartle, who grew up near Tower, often was sent as a
kid to feed the family’s cows in the pasture next to the company, where he
could see a greenish cloud hovering over the plant. It was chlorine mixed with
DDT, and it had leaked.